Steve Soper,
Foundation Distinguished Professor, Director, Center of BioModular Multi-Scale System for Precision Medicine,
The University of Kansas
Prof. Soper is currently a Foundation Distinguished Professor in Chemistry and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. Prof. Soper also holds an appointment at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in Ulsan, South Korea, where he is a World Class University Professor. He is also serving as a Science Advisor for a number of major worldwide companies. Prof. Soper is currently on the Editorial Board for Scientific Reports and Journal of Micro- and Nanosystems.
As a result of his efforts, Prof. Soper has secured extramural funding totaling >$103M and has published over 265 peer-reviewed manuscripts (h index = 71) and is the author of 20 patents. He is also the founder of a startup company, BioFluidica, which is marketing devices for the isolation and enumeration of circulating tumor cells. His list of awards includes Chemical Instrumentation by the American Chemical Society, the Benedetti-Pichler Award for Microchemistry, Fellow of the AAAS, Fellow of Applied Spectroscopy, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, R&D 100 Award, Distinguished Masters Award at LSU and Outstanding Scientist/Engineer in the state of Louisiana in 2001. Finally, Prof. Soper has granted 60 PhDs and 6 MS degrees to students under his mentorship. He currently heads a group of 20 researchers.
Affinity Selection and Enumeration of SARS-CoV-2 Viral Particles from Saliva Samples using Microfluidics for COVID-19 Diagnostics
Thursday, 18 March 2021 at 14:00
Add to Calendar ▼2021-03-18 14:00:002021-03-18 15:00:00Europe/LondonAffinity Selection and Enumeration of SARS-CoV-2 Viral Particles from Saliva Samples using Microfluidics for COVID-19 DiagnosticsInnovations in Microfluidics and SCA 2021 in BostonBostonSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) arises from the SARS-CoV-2 virus and has been found to be highly contagious. To mitigate spreading, testing has been deemed an important asset. Testing has predominately utilized RT-qPCR as well as serological-based tests. However, while new machines are rolling out for point-of-care testing (POCT), issues are present with these common testing systems, for example the need for reagents (e.g. enzymes, fluorescent reporters, antibodies), workflows that sometimes require specialized operators, and the inability to distinguish between infectious and non-infectious individuals, which is important in determining the need for quarantining. We report an innovative COVID-19 diagnostic test that directly addresses the aforementioned issues. The assay accepts a clinical sample and specifically selects SARS-CoV-2 particles from the sample using surface-immobilized DNA aptamers targeting the spike protein, releases photolytically the selected viral particles (VPs), and then counts the number of SARS-CoV-2 particles using a label-free approach. The workflow is simple and fully automated and also, no reagents are required once the assay is deployed for testing. The entire assay was carried out using microfluidic chips made from a plastic that were injection molded to allow for high scale production at low cost. The VP selection chip consisted of 1.5 million pillars that allowed for affinity loading up to 1010 SARS-CoV-2 particles at a recovery ~90%. Following selection, the VPs were released from the capture surface using a photocleavable linker by a blue-light LED (79% release efficiency) and subsequently counted using a nano-Coulter Counter (nCC). For high throughput single VP counting, 5 nCCs were placed in parallel and offered 100% detection efficiency for VPs travelling through a 200 nm pore. The entire assay could be completed in <20 min. In a 20 patient blinded study, the test correctly identified 10 non-infected individuals (clinical specificity = 100%) and in 5 COVID-19 patients, VPs were detected indicative of “active” disease, while 4/5 others were deemed infected by RT-qPCR, but those individuals had no VPs suggesting these patients were not contagious (clinical sensitivity = 95%).
Add to Calendar ▼2021-03-18 00:00:002021-03-19 00:00:00Europe/LondonInnovations in Microfluidics and SCA 2021Innovations in Microfluidics and SCA 2021 in BostonBostonSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com
Add to Calendar ▼2021-03-18 14:00:002021-03-18 15:00:00Europe/LondonAffinity Selection and Enumeration of SARS-CoV-2 Viral Particles from Saliva Samples using Microfluidics for COVID-19 DiagnosticsInnovations in Microfluidics and SCA 2021 in BostonBostonSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com
